Reporting Progress
Reporting Progress
This page describes reporting work item progress and includes the following sections:
- About Reporting Progress
- Progress Reporting Methods
- Reporting a Task as Complete
- Shared and Individual Reporting
- Updating Progress Report via Email
- Updating your Works' %Complete from a Progress Report Email
- Relevant System Settings
- Relation Between Actual Effort, Work and % Completed
- How %Completed is Calculated in AdaptiveWork
- Task Completeness Calculation
- Pending Time
About Reporting Progress
There are a few ways to report progress on work items in a project. Resources can update progress on assigned work items via one of the following methods:
- Updating AdaptiveWork Progress fields
- Via Progress Update emails
- Logging time in Timesheets or in real time (Stopwatch)
Note: For maximum efficiency, progress can be concurrently updated by resources on several levels such as task level, milestone level, etc.
When updating progress at any level, data automatically aggregates to all relevant upper levels and progress-impacted work items, enabling resources to gain an accurate reading of the project's 'health' in real time.
Progress Reporting Methods
Depending on your company policy, progress can be updated using one of the following means - qualitative progress or quantitative progress (or both):
- Qualitative: Reporting the percentage of completion, indicating the readiness of a work item
- Quantitative: Reporting the remaining and actual effort (located in the project's Properties card, Scheduling pane), indicating the amount of days/hours spent on a specific project as well as the amount of days/hours that are still required to accomplish the work
- Reporting hours via Timesheets (which can be set to update Actual Effort)
Reporting a Task as Complete
There are two different types of users that can report a task as complete. The system behaves a little differently based on who marked the task as complete.
Work Item and Project Managers
Work item managers and project managers can mark tasks as complete via the Common ribbon Mark As drop-down option or by updating the %Complete, Actual Effort or Remaining Effort of a task or parent work item.
Resources
Resources assigned to tasks are unable to directly mark a task as complete. This provides a higher level of visibility around task progress while the task is being executed.
Resources report tasks as complete by one of the following methods:
- Updating %Complete to 100%
- Updating Actual Effort to equal the task's work
- Updating Remaining Effort to 0h
Shared and Individual Reporting
To Do list items can be reported on a per individual resource basis or shared reporting within the task resource pool.
This setting can be accessed in the Task Completion Reporting Policy section within system settings to be set on a global level, and can also be individually set in the work item Properties card for individual tasks.
Updating Progress Report via Email
Progress Reporting emails are either sent automatically (according to set system settings) or may be sent manually from a selected Work Item.
Before Progress Reporting can be used, ensure you configure the relevant system settings.
Task types that are reported are:
- Current active tasks
- Pending active tasks that will be active by when the next report is sent
A system setting defines the email lifespan (in days) for which the email report form may be sent back for the system to update the task's progress.
Daily Progress Update Email
Situations may arise where the system does not allow you update while attempting to update task progress.
Such situations typically include:
- An expired Progress Report email
- A newer Progress Report email has been sent to you
- Your progress is already updated
- Project data is changed and no tasks require your attention
Quick Update Form
If task progress reporting is sent manually, the resource can only view their active tasks and not upcoming tasks.
You can update work item progress without actually having to log into the system by using the Progress Report Quick Update form.
Updated data is sent to the system and the relevant projects are updated accordingly.
Updating your Works' % Complete from a Progress Report Email
Once a Progress Report Email from AdaptiveWork is received, resources must select one of the following two options:
- My Progress is according to Plan - clicking this link verifies the report detailed in the email into the system.
The resulting screen indicates that progress according to the plan has updated successfully. - Quick Update - clicking this link opens a form to manually update task progress.
Choosing to manually update enables entering the % completed value or the number of days of actual effort and remaining effort. Data entered automatically adjusts the work plan. For example if you enter remaining effort 10 days, the due date for that specific task is adjusted accordingly. When more than one resource is assigned to a task, all resources receive a Progress
Report. The report is updated in sequential order according to resources updating the report.
Relevant System Settings
For configuring System Settings related to progress reporting via emails, please refer to the Task Completion Reporting Policy section.
The following conditions must be met before sending a Progress Report email:
- System Settings are defined
- Resources assigned to a work item where 'Email Allowed' is defined receive a progress report
- Sent to manager of a work item
If the recipient is both the work item manager and an assigned resource on a different work item, the recipient receives one email summarizing the progress report for all work items to which they are assigned.
The system updates the latest details.
Relation Between Actual Effort, Work and % Completed
Actual Effort reported by resources is one of the possible ways that Actual Effort can exceed the estimated work of the task.
In this case the work item is internally flagged as 'Overworked' to indicate that the work item is 'over-budget' for its defined work.
When Actual Effort is updated via reported Timesheet hours, the 'Overwork' situation can cause ambiguity of the %Completeness.
This status is indicated by setting the %Completeness Uncertain field to 'TRUE'.
Work items with this status are not transferred automatically to Completed state.
When % Completeness is Uncertain (i.e. the field is set to 'TRUE'):
- % Complete displays a '?' character (example: 100 (?))
- Remaining Effort, if it’s not manually set, is displayed in red with a '?' character
How %Completed is Calculated in AdaptiveWork
There are several rules used for the calculation of the % complete in AdaptiveWork as described in this section
- General Rules
- Relationship Between %Completed and Time Tracking Reported Actual Effort
- On Hold and Canceled Work Items
General Rules
The following rules are the basis of the calculation:
- Hammock completeness is influenced by its direct children (sub-projects/sub-tasks).
- When weight (via Progress Impact) is defined for an item, the item's relative effort is not used for parent completeness calculations.
- When a hammock's children do not have Progress Impact weight defined, the calculation of the hammock's % Completed is according to their effort.
- When all children of a hammock have defined Progress Impact weights, the % Completeness of the parent is calculated according to those weights.
- When a hammock has children of which some have weights and others don’t have weights, the children with weights defined are calculated by their weights, whereas the children without weight defined are calculated according to their effort and the
relative weight.
Relationship Between %Completed and Time Tracking Reported Actual Effort
Even if resources have reported time via Time Tracking, they can manually change % Completed for work items.
In this case Actual Effort is not changed by the manual modification of % Completed and continues to use Timesheet entries as the basis for calculating the Actual Effort.
On Hold and Canceled Work Items
- Reporting is not allowed on work items in 'On Hold' and 'Canceled' states. Resources are required to first change the state to 'Draft' or 'Active'.
Stopwatches running prior to the change of State are still allowed to report their time. - Progress is not calculated on item types in 'On Hold' and 'Canceled' states.
Task Completeness Calculation
Weight Calculation
When calculating the %Complete of a hammock, the %Complete is also influenced by the weight of the sub items.
The weight is the amount of effort defined per work item (the Work field).
- Weight default value = 100
- Weight manually set value will not be limited
- Calculated weight = weight value / total of all weights
Children group types under a hammock
There are three children group types under the hammock:
- Priority 1 – Work items that have weight
Distribution in the group is according to the weight of the individual work item = SUM (all work items weight) / work item weight - Priority 2 - Work items that have work
Distribution in the group is according to the work of the individual work item = SUM (all work items work)/ work item work - Priority 3 – All others work items
Distribution in the group is linear = 1/COUNT(all workitems work)
The distribution between the groups is based on the calculation of the number of children for each group.
Hammock Calculation
Hammock completeness calculations are calculated as follows:
Completeness % of hammock = sum (completeness of child * its relative weight/ total weight)
Completeness of child can be its direct completeness (user defined for task or calculated on hammocks) or actual effort/total effort (user defined for tasks)
Relative weight has the three following scenarios:
- Weight is manually defined: Calculation disregards effort and only calculates according to weight
- No weight defined and task has effort defined: weight of task = default weight *(task effort/total effort of tasks with no weight defined)
- No weight defined and task does not have effort defined: Calculation is done using default weight (100)
Example:
Hammock has six children:
- Child 1 - Completeness = 30, weight 50, (effort doesn’t matter)
- Child 2 - Completeness = 20, weight 150, (effort doesn’t matter)
- Child 3 - Completeness = 70, no weight, effort =5
- Child 4 - Completeness = 80, no weight, effort =10
- Child 5 - Completeness = 40, no weight, effort =15
- Child 6 - Completeness = 60, no weight, effort = 0
The Relative weight of children =
- Child 1 = 50/600 = 1/12
- Child 2 = 150/600 = 1/4
- Child 3 = 300/600 (relative weight of all tasks with no weight defined) *5/30 (relative effort of all tasks with no weight defined) = 1/12
- Child 4 = 300/600 (relative weight of all tasks with no weight defined)*10/30 (relative effort of all tasks with no weight defined) = 1/6
- Child 5 = 300/600 (relative weight of all tasks with no weight defined)*15/30 (relative effort of all tasks with no weight defined) = 1/4
- Child 6 = 100/600 (default weight/total weight) = 1/6 % Completeness = (30*1/12) + (20*1/4) + (70*1/12) + (80*1/6) + (40*1/4) + (60*1/6) = 46.67
Pending Time
- Reporting Progress
- Why Pending Time is Necessary
- Pending Time Calculation
- Pending Time Display
- Customization
Reporting Progress
Many organizations use Actual Effort and Remaining Effort fields in Timesheets to give additional granularity and accuracy (who worked, what hours, which days), especially on billable work.
Time reported via Timesheets does not necessarily affect Actual Effort.
For example, your organization may choose to use Timesheets and report % Completed separately and not use Effort reporting at all.
All work items have a setting 'Actual Effort Updated from Timesheets' that enables choosing whether or not to automatically update the Actual Effort with time submitted via Timesheets (Remaining Effort updates accordingly).
When Actual Effort Updated from Timesheets is enabled, you can only update Actual Effort via Timesheets (or Stopwatch which creates Timesheet entries) and no longer be able to manually update the Actual Effort from the Work Items, Projects or Tasks modules.
Why Pending Time is Necessary
When using Time Tracking in the Timesheets module to report time worked on work items (projects, milestones or tasks), time is not automatically submitted for approval.
Users must click Submit.
Additionally, your organization may be using Timesheet Approvals, where project managers , direct managers or Financial users must approve Timesheets (enabled or disabled by your organization's Admin user via System Settings).
The result is that resources may have logged time without having submitted it, or managers are yet to approve Timesheets giving the false impression that no progress has been made, where in fact work was done.
This is where Pending Time is necessary.
Pending Time Calculation
Pending Time automatically summarizes all unsubmitted and unapproved time, reflecting a real-time, high resolution summary on just how much time has been spent on a work item.
Pending Time Field Calculation Conditions
